Field
The present invention relates to cooking pans, and in particular to improved pans for use with induction cooking devices.
Related Art
Cooking pots and pans (hereafter “pans”) are well known. Pans can include cast iron pans, stainless steel, anodized aluminum, among various others, as are well known in the art.
Induction cooking has become of increasingly greater interest, particularly with the great popularity of the Precision Induction Cooktop (PIC) available from NUWAVE, LLC of Libertyville, Ill. USA. Induction cookers are safer to use than conventional cookers because there are no open flames. The surface below the cooking vessel is no hotter than the vessel; only the pan generates heat. The control system can shut down the element if a pot is not present or not large enough. Induction cookers are easy to clean because the cooking surface is flat and smooth, even though it may have several heating zones. Since the cooking surface is not directly heated, spilled food does not burn on the surface as with other conventional electric ranges.
Induction cooking heats a cooking vessel with induction heating, instead of infrared radiation from electrical wires or a gas flame as with a traditional cooking stove. For all models of induction cooktop, a cooking vessel must conventionally be made of a ferromagnetic metal such as cast iron or stainless steel. Copper, glass and aluminum vessels can be placed on a ferromagnetic interface disc which enables these materials to be used, but this solution is not always desirable since such a disc may not always be available.
In an induction cooker, a coil of copper wire is placed underneath the cooking surface supporting a cooking pot. An alternating electric current flows through the coil, which produces an oscillating magnetic field. This oscillating magnetic field induces a magnetic flux with a resulting eddy current in the cooking pot equivalent to the electric current in the coil. The eddy current in the metal pot then produces resistive heating which heats the foodstuff in the pot or pan. While the current in the coil is large, the electric current is produced by standard household power supplies.
Thus, unfortunately not all conventional cooking pans work with induction cooking devices. What is needed then is an improved pan for use with induction cooking devices that overcomes shortcomings of conventional cooking pots and pans.